The Sit
March 26, 2010
I’m on the street at night. I see a human being like the one you see above walking, alone, in my direction. It’s either a female human being or a male human being dressed like a female. It’s not an antelope, or a filing cabinet, or a police car or a dinner plate. It’s a human being. With this knowledge, most of the work I began approximately two hours before leaving my apartment several hours earlier – work undertaken to prepare me for this moment – is complete. This human being’s choice of apparel, and silhouette, qualifies them. I have a lead.
All I have to do now is…close.
The Long Shot Pt. 2: Hanging on a Scene
March 23, 2010
This is just what my sapling looked like when we met on a cross street in Manhattan’s East Thirties. The only difference was that we met at night. I never saw my tree in the daytime. Not one time.
For the first three years I spent on my then favorite block, that baby tree was never there. Then, one night, it just was. I didn’t know when the baby tree was planted on my block. I suppose I missed its arrival by a few hours. I’d hang out on the block between Second and Third Avenues every night, the block that served as its new nursery, and which will someday serve as its retirement community, and never saw it planted. It must have been planted in the daytime. It was a delicate, trim and pretty tree. It didn’t expect attention and it kept to itself. For hundreds of nights my baby tree was never there, and then, all of sudden, it was. The tree was just like the girls who would walk around the corner of an Avenue and enter the block where I’d wait for them. They didn’t expect attention and they kept to themselves. For hundreds of nights they were never there, and then, all of a sudden, they were.
The Long Shot Pt. 1
March 16, 2010
"This is beat." "Stop whining. You're the one who wanted to go out for dinner."
Predators are boring. Ever see a television program about lions stalking prey? Not very exciting, really. Lots of waiting. Sure, there’s the moment of attack, which, granted, can be dramatic, and preceding it, the chase, but these things happen in seconds, and often times are aborted by the prey. Sometimes the prey is too fast, or too strong, or too wily, or, it picks up scent, and runs off, avoiding serious harm.
I once saw a program on PBS which followed two young male lions who, newly separated from their mother, were trying to execute their very first attack. Their chosen prey? A herd of zebra. But, so amateur were they, they failed again and again in launching a surprise assault. Because of their ineptitude they didn’t eat for many days. And over those days it became so difficult for these two lions to successfully execute an attack on unsuspecting prey that there was authentic concern shown for them by the producers of the film that the two young lions would starve to death.
Kings of the jungle? Hardly. More like two fools in tall brown grass where the only things growling were stomachs. Bad lions.
Every Woman A Jailer
March 14, 2010
My life changed for the worse – worse than it already was – the day after a young, quick thinking woman in Manhattan named Thao Nguyen snapped a picture with her cell phone camera of New York restaurant owner Dan Hoyt exposing himself to her on a subway car.
She was smart. He was stupid. He got arrested and Ms. Nguyen got a lot of positive, and supportive press in New York. That’s the cover of the New York Daily News up there, with Ms. Nguyen holding the cell that holds Mr. Hoyt.
And there’s Mr. Hoyt, being thrown into his cell – caught in the act by Ms. Nguyen. I just don’t understand what he was thinking when this happened. Well, that’s not entirely correct, since I do know what he was thinking. I know, because he told reporters what he was thinking after he was arrested.
“I’ve met women who enjoy it. After this incident happened, I had a woman tell me, ‘You know, that sounds exciting to me.’ She wouldn’t mind being on the other end.” And about his jailer? Hoyt said that if he and Ms. Nguyen had met under different circumstances, she might enjoy his company. “You know, she’d go, ‘That guy’s pretty cool. He’s got this restaurant, and he’s fun.’ She’d probably want to go out with me.”
The Combat Zone Pt. 3: Right Up Next To You And Gone
March 12, 2010
Photograph by Roswell Angier: Sonny, Washington Street., 1974
In 1979, a gallon of gas cost .86 cents. Sony released the Walkman. And the board of directors for a company called Apple approved funding for research into the development of a personal computer for the average citizen user. The Macintosh computer would arrive five years later, in 1984.
The Pilgrim Theater
There were no cell phones in 1979, or digital cameras. There was no Twitter or online porn or HBO. If you wanted porn, you had to go to a movie theater, like The Pilgrim. Because the communication devices such as email and text and cellular that we use today didn’t exist in 1979, people interacted with other people differently than I think they do today. You had to pay more attention to people in 1979 because there were fewer ways to remember them than there are now; the concept of time was different. Civilization was quieter, slower, more private.
The Combat Zone Pt. 2
March 10, 2010
Photograph by Roswell Angier: Washington Street., 1977
In his 1933 inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said to the nation, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” This is how I felt when I was in The Combat Zone.
I never felt fear there. To the contrary, I always felt safety. Or, perhaps it would be more precise to state that I felt for safety. For me, there was nothing in The Combat Zone to fear, except fear. Mine. I had no business – literally – to conduct there. I wasn’t a drug dealer or buyer, I wasn’t a prostitute or pimp, or a hustler, or a junkie, or a mugger or a patron of the Zone’s numerous bars and taverns and dance halls. I was a street spectator. I liked to watch the business of The Combat Zone; I wasn’t one of its patrons.
When I’d roam Washington, Tremont, Boylston, Kneeland and Lagrange Streets on my bike, I’d always be looking, watching and listening. I’d stay far enough away from what I perceived to be potential dangers to be close enough to examine them with as much intimacy as I dared, in hopes of understanding my perceptions. I paid attention. I remained safe. I didn’t ask for trouble, so trouble never found me to extend its invitation.
Photograph by Jerry Berndt: The Combat Zone, Washington St., Boston, 1967
For example, I’d often ride my bike onto the sidewalk, brake, slow, and stop, and, from the saddle, lean against the cement of a building’s facade and smoke as I watched the nightly parade of cars, and the march of men and women on foot, looking this way and that, as they went hooking and hustling through their nights.
Photograph by John Goodman: The Schlitz Boys, 1978
George Carlin once said that one thing you never see is a junkie with leisure time. The joke being that a junkie has no time for leisure, as they’re either on a nod, or, on a hustle to find another fix. I think the only people who felt fear in, or from, The Combat Zone, were those who expected to only find fear there. Those who didn’t feel fear were like the junkies in Carlin’s joke. We were either enjoying our nod on a sex high, or, hustling to find a fix, sexual or otherwise. We didn’t have time to be fearful. The night, after all, lasts only so long.
The Combat Zone Pt. 1
March 9, 2010
Photograph by Roswell Angier: Sonny, Washington Street., 1974
I sometimes wish I had been born ten or fifteen years earlier than I was. When I wish this, I attach a mental asterisk which directs me to a footnote:
*Everything else about my life would remain the same; only my date of birth would change.
This wish of mine allows me to fantasize about a years-long opportunity to explore and participate in the society that inhabited Boston’s red light district, The Combat Zone. But I was born in the sixties, and so only experienced The Combat Zone during its final years of meaningful existence. It was a semen, saliva and sweat stained social cesspool for those in need of, with a desire for, or a curiosity about, sexual expression more sick than sensual. When I discovered it, The Combat Zone was dying, so consider myself lucky, and privileged, that for a short time, I was able to live in one of America’s most infamous open-air public theaters of sex, drugs and crime. The hours I’d spend at night in Boston’s Combat Zone were some of the most exhilarating hours I’ve ever lived.
Photograph by John Goodman: Man Peep Show, Oct. 13,1978
Video: Welcome to The Combat Zone
March 7, 2010
Once, just once… Pt. 3
March 6, 2010
I think everyone has had a moment when they’ve said something like:
“I made the best lasagna last night! It came out perfect! I’ve been trying to perfect that recipe for months, and last night it finally all came together! It was awesome!” or, “Oh, man! I aced that interview! Aced it!” or, “I wore that yellow dress today! You know, the one you said made me look so happy, and guess what? That cute guy I told you about? Steve? You know! The guy from marketing? He asked me out!”
I think people like to have moments like these, and share them with other people. I think so because I’ve heard people say such things to other people. I’ll bet you have too. I’d bet you’ve said similar things when you’ve found specific success with a hoped-for outcome. It’s human nature, right? We enjoy our successes because they make us happy.
For instance, I doubt anyone has ever said to a co-worker over morning coffee, “Gee, Bob, I hope my automatic jams when I go to blow Larry’s fucking head off in the sales meeting today.” The gun jamming wouldn’t lead to success because the objective is to kill Larry. If the gun jams, Larry lives, and that’s bad. It’s good for Larry – a success of sorts – but fuck Larry. Larry sucks. It’s bad for the person who wanted to shoot him in the head during the sales meeting.
Once, just once… Pt. 2
March 3, 2010
I don’t dance. Never have. I love music – all kinds of music – but I don’t dance. I’m an accomplished keeper of time with foot, finger tip, tapping pencil or head bob, but I do not, cannot, and never want to dance. I sometimes wonder if it’s because of what happened to me in junior high school at my eighth grade dance with Stacy Morgentheau?
The eighth grade dance at Sparrow Lake Junior High School was like a junior Junior Prom. In the late spring of eighth grade, before our summer vacation began and two months before we’d become freshman at Sparrow Lake Regional High School, our school held a dance for us. It was our celebratory evening at the end of our two-year conditioning for high school. The dance was held – where else – in the school gymnasium. On a Friday night. Parents waited in cars in the parking lot.
All night, my friends and I congregated on one side of the gym, and the girls who we knew, and who we knew we had a chance to dance with, and flirt with, clustered on the other. It was this way all night with all the kids in my class. The boys kept to one side of the gym in groups of three or six or ten or fifteen, and the girls did the same on the opposite side of the boards. Each group of boys was loosely parallel to the group of girls they socialized with in and between classes. We were all bursting into puberty, or were on the cusp of it. I remember this clearly now as I write. I haven’t thought of this night in decades. It was a night, for me, of awesome misery.
Once, just once… Pt. 1
March 2, 2010
About six or seven years ago, I used to write poetry – asinine poetry – for a website called Asinine Poetry, under the pseudonym, Lover Dudley. Lover Dudley was my ‘porn name’. To get your own porn name, that is, the name you’d most likely work under were you a porn actor, all you need to do is combine the name of your first pet with the name of the street you grew up on when you were a child, and – presto! Porn name!
My family’s first pet was a Daschund. His name was Lover. He had a little white heart-shaped marking on his forehead. I grew up on Dudley Road, in Sparrow Lake. Lover Dudley. Get it?
One of my asinine poems appears on The Bad Flasher in this post, and another, here. And yet another poem appears in this post. And now, here’s the fourth asinine poem by Lover Dudley to appear on The Bad Flasher. It has, like the other three poems, no respectable relation to poetry, but does have, like the others, direct relation to the communication skills I’ve exhibited towards the girls and women I’ve known, or have encountered spontaneously and have found attractive, over the course of my sick, twisted life.
To all of you – the thousands of you – I regret I didn’t have the courage to simply smile when I saw you, or to say, “Hello,” or to compliment you on your hairstyle or outfit or smile. Believe me, I noticed. I could have been a contender.
Once, just once
ONCE, just once
I’d like to see you try.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Okay, then, fine.
So do it then.
You wish.
Scared?
No.
Then do it!
Shut up!
Once, just once
I’d like to see you try.
A Message from The Bad Flasher
February 25, 2010
"Can you fly this plane and land it?" "I can't tell." "You can tell me. I'm a doctor."*
Thanks for Your Pre-Existing Condition: Curiosity
The Bad Flasher is made entirely from 100% organic, free-range, free-trade, real English language. It has not been copy edited, line edited, grammar checked, spell checked or proofread by anyone other than me.
If you like what you read here – aside from the run-on sentences and poor grammar – and wish that it read…better…then invite yourself over for some editing. I have an extra chair, a telephone and email, and can type about 110 words a minute, so I’m sure we could make it work in person or via your remote control. I’m a perverted, egotistical, narcissist freak pervert loser, but I’m surprisingly pleasant in short doses lasting approximately no longer than three hours, once every ten to thirty days, or as long as you don’t fall in love with me.
So why all the weird sex shit? Well, let me tell you. I tried writing a blog about cupcakes, but I’m one of those people – you know, one of those people – who doesn’t find them cute and who has, for better or worse, recurring fantasies of drowning those who do in enormous stainless steel mixing bowls filled with cupcake batter, wire coat hangers and piranhas while I read to them – through a bullhorn – selected passages from Mein Kampf. A blog about cupcakes didn’t work out. I tried a blog filled with pictures I took on my vacation to an “exotic land” to show everyone how exotic and globally aware I am, but you know what? No one really gives a shit about where you went on your vacation unless you paid for them to go with you, and even then, they don’t give a shit about your vacation. You know what they care about? Spending as much time away from you on their free vacation as they possibly can! Did you know that over eighty percent of the people who you think like you, don’t? It’s true. Ask some of them. If they deny it, they dislike you. I tried a blog about fashion and celebrity gossip too, but since, like, no one writes about that stuff, I didn’t think it’d draw much of an audience, so I passed on that idea too and settled for what you’ve found here. And it seems to be working. For now.
The Fucking of Anna Wintour
February 23, 2010
Anna Wintour, American VOGUE
Clothes are like people’s skin. At least here, in Manhattan, they are. I’m sure it’s the same in Paris, and London, and Los Angeles, but not so much in Morton, Idaho or Flemming, Tennessee. When someone drops their clothes off at the dry cleaner in a city like New York, it’s like they’re leaving parts of themselves, their physical and emotional parts, in the care of a stranger for a few days to be touched, stroked, restored. And since the person behind the counter most likely has no relation to the lifestyle of the customer, human nature makes the customer wary.
After all, how could someone working in a cleaners – making what, $8.00 an hour? – possibly understand the architectural mastery behind the ruching on the sleeves of an Oscar de la Renta dress, or the importance of line on a Kiton blazer’s front which is three button, roll-to-two? Impossible! That’s why people always ask, ‘Can I get it tonight, or tomorrow?’ They don’t want to be without their whole self. They can’t bear to leave their skin with someone so…alien…even if they have no intention of wearing the garments they’re leaving to be cleaned that night, or, tomorrow, or ever again.
The whole thing is just…simply…horrendous.
Solitary Confinement: In The Box Pt. 3: Wreck on the Highway
February 20, 2010
I had never fallen asleep behind the wheel of a car before – that is, in a car I was driving – so didn’t know anything about kinetic energy, the mathematic theory of velocity squared, injury tolerance, soft tissue trauma, torsional force, what happens to facial bone when it’s driven into hardened plastic at over 80 mph or how large a human head can swell from blunt force trauma.
I began to learn about all these things two days after I crashed into a telephone pole at 3:17am on Route 119 in Kelton. It took me two days to wake up from the nap I’d begun while driving. Had I been awake, according to the two chicken farmers who dragged me from my flaming car, I probably would have died. They came to the hospital to see me, and tell me that.
“You’da bin did, boy! People stiff’n up when they gonna crash, but you was sleepin’! Bounced around in there like a piece of cooked spaghetti. Knocked out power to the whole town, but you made it! Hell…we was watchin’ tee-vee when we heard the thump and lost the picture, and we knew you was out there. So we grabbed some shovels and came runnin’. We sure did.”
I never found out why they felt they needed shovels.
Solitary Confinement: In The Box Pt. 2
February 19, 2010
I suppose my school day routines – how I navigated through them – were like millions of other teenager’s school day routines. But with me, there was something other, which made my routines different from many of my friends and acquaintances at Sparrow Lake Regional High. I’d have powerful desires, daily, to be alone. I didn’t understand why. Sometimes I wondered why I was seemingly cursed with the need for solitude at all. Many times I can recall being invited to play basketball after school, to go to McDonald’s between classes, to hang out in the cafeteria, or to go to a party someone was having because their parents had left town on a business trip or vacation – and rarely accepting such invitations. My need for solitude overpowered them, and I’d always find an excuse to escape their call.
This need for separation extended to girls too. I can distinctly recall how, as a junior in high school, my entire body ached for girls like Amy McGrath and Linda Bandini, Cathy Monroe and Susan Biggs. They, and other girls too, were all accessible to me. We knew each other. We talked. We shared classes. We shared friends. But I could never screw up the nerve to ever ask any of them on a date. I knew they’d say, “No,” so I never asked. Instead, I just watched. Alone. And tried to figure out…something. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was there. Just sitting there. Waiting to be figured out. Girls, obviously, had something to do with whatever ‘it’ was.
I’d pass time alone, usually content, contentedly thinking about whatever I allowed my mind to latch onto. Sometimes this would be in the art department studios, where I’d also read, or sketch. Sometimes, I’d spend solitary time sitting on top of a hallway radiator box across from my open locker, reading a book, or drawing, or working on homework for my English classes. Those were my favorite classes, so I always tried my best on the homework assigned to me. I didn’t try as hard with my math or science assignments. Sometimes I’d sequester myself in a square room in the back of the school library called the silent study. It was a classroom-sized, carpeted box with desks and chairs, and was a no-talking environment. And, of course, I always found peace and quiet in my car, just sitting in the parking lot, or driving back home to Kelton on Route 119.
Solitary Confinement: In The Box Pt. 1
February 17, 2010
The first two years of high school in Sparrow Lake passed by me, over me and through me like water. A plumber told me, many years later, on a job site I was charged with overseeing, “Water’s like a worm. Goes where it wants.” That’s how my freshman and sophomore years in high school passed me. They went where they wanted, and I was carried along on their current. I was a cipher. It took two full years for me in high school before I began to find a semblance of self. By time junior year began, I was beginning to feel comfortable in my teenage skin.
WIPEOUT!
February 14, 2010
“Just think, right now, all over the world there are people exercising bad judgement. Somebody, right this minute, is probably making the mistake of his life.”
- George Carlin
Depending upon your age, the “mistake of your life,” I think, is a relative term.
For instance, I know a guy who knew that his girlfriend had genital herpes. He also knew she was bipolar, and knew, that because of her mental disorder, she didn’t always take her daily dose of Valtrex to keep her herpes virus dormant. He also knew, on a certain night, when he decided to fuck her without a condom, that she was high on coke, so wouldn’t make him put one on. He knew she was high on coke and wouldn’t make him put on a condom because he bought the coke for her, and had used half of it himself – with her! Now, at age twenty-six, he’s got her genital herpes. On – you guessed it – his genitals!
Mistake of his life? Yeah, probably. But odds say he’s got a lot of life left, so he’ll probably top that one. It’ll take some work on his part of course, unless the pharmaceutical industry gets a move on. But, don’t worry, he’s already hard at work on beating his personal worst. Or is it his personal best?
First, he’s not dating that dirty, crazy, coke-headed slut anymore. No sir! Fuck her! She gave him herpes! Now he’s only dating “good” girls. And, because he’s handsome, and well-off, and charming, he’s sleeping with most of them the very day they first meet. He’s not telling any of them he has genital herpes, of course. That’d be stupid, he argues, since he has no intention of ever seeing them again.
“Why tell them,” he asked me once, “if I know I don’t have feelings for them? I’m waiting to fall in love with someone first. Then I’ll tell her.”
“Just think, right now, all over the world there are people exercising bad judgement. Somebody, right this minute, is probably making the mistake of his life.”
George Carlin
Rx: OBJECTIFICATION Pt. 3: Deli Girl
February 12, 2010
In 1999, I worked in midtown Manhattan for the third largest publisher of print and online pornography on Planet Earth. This is what my job entailed:
For eight hours a day, I’d sit in my private office eighty feet above the east side streets and avenues, where, with the aid of an Aeron chair, a keyboard rest for ergonomic comfort and an obscenely large monitor connected to a CPU connected to a T-1 line, they paid me to surf the World Wide Web all day, day after day, month after month searching for the “best” porn sites I could find. When I surfed into a site which seemed unique, I’d stay a while, and play with it. I used a company credit card to buy membership to whatever site I chose. I used a detailed eight-point rating criteria my six colleagues and I developed over a four-month period to judge the worth of the sites I found. We took our porn seriously. Big business, porn. My ratings would go into a data base, and then, I’d write a 400 to 600 word review of the site, based on those ratings. The review would be edited, vetted against the site, and, if deemed accurate by other editors, published to the the site operated by my division.
If a site’s majority content related to, for example, TVs, CDs, TSs, S&M, BBW, BDSM, CFNM, BBBJ, MILF, JO, GFE, or, porn starlets, Playmates or Pets, courtesans, mistresses, geishas, sugar babies, sexy stewardesses, seductive school teachers, sinful secretaries, blow-up dolls, Lolitas, barely legal sluts, Asian sex slaves, Mistresses, Madames, Dominatrix, Girls Gone Wild, girls gone submissive, boob-flashing-bead-grabbing-beer-swilling Mardi Gras bimbos, naughty nurses, ‘classy’ ladies, ‘upscale’ whatevers or ’sophisticated’ so-and-so’s, I was on it.
Great job? Sure! But that’s a lot of naked humans from all seven continents having sex in front of me in my office – every day. Sometimes, I’d need a break. So, when I’d grow weary from all the sex, I’d ride the elevator to the street, where I’d smoke. Sometimes, in the spring and summertime, I’d walk down the block to a nearby Korean deli – Manhattan’s convenient, convenience stores – and I’d buy an iced coffee from the Deli Girl.
Rx: OBJECTIFICATION Pt. 2: R68A and R160
February 11, 2010
When you live in New York City, you learn to make your daily existence as easy as possible on your mind and body. A granular example, for instance, is this: You learn to make your daily existence easier even by the clothes you choose to wear each day.
The summers here can be brutally hot and filth-filled from smog laying about on heavy, humid air. The winters can be as cold as the summers are hot, and equally as filthy, but the filth in winter usually is found at street corners or on subway station stairs. It’s called slush; a cold, dirt-blackened, syrupy liquid made from melting snow, street salt and any other chemical or biological matter expelled or abandoned by man or beast that has been washed from its resting place on a sidewalk or street, and which has dribbled, trickled or flowed into the slush puddle or pool. You learn how to dress for the weather here. Fast.
See, if you don’t, generally, have a plan of action each day when you awaken here – weather be damned – this city will mercilessly destroy your mental and physical health, and consequently, their byproducts: time management; finances; career; ambitions; sense of humor; self-esteem; relationships with lovers and friends.
Millions of New Yorkers do enjoy their rare down-time days here, of course. Most of us have them, or force them to exist through hard work: getting ahead. These are the days when we have a light, or clear agenda. On such days, we awaken and walk outside to embrace New York City on our terms. We cherish days such as these and, because they’re rare, we gorge when we have them. Even if, on such a day, we choose to never get out of bed. When we sleep in here, we sleep in. “Hey New York! Go fuck yourself!”
But, no matter if it’s a busy day or one which waits before us as wide-open as a childhood school day cancelled by snow, we usually have to climb aboard a nine ton subway car at some point to get from here, to over there to do something, and then, climb aboard again to come back.
Rx: OBJECTIFICATION Pt. 1
February 10, 2010
“…Objectification has been shown in clinical trials to reduce that dreaded, ”Oh, shit, GROSS!” feeling that comes when you first see the person you thought you wanted to sleep with naked. Certain people may find Objectification offensive when used in the company of others, but acceptable, even agreeable, when alone. Dosage and usage therefore, may vary from person to person. Ask your doctor if Objectification is right for you.”
If I see a pretty female older than a teenager and younger than what one would generally term, “Really fucking old,” I’m gonna check her out; I’m going to immediately take a visual inventory of her.
I live in Manhattan. There are millions of females here. Manhattan is an eight miles long by two miles wide island. It’s small, it’s crowded and everyone’s moving. Because of this, you see a lot of people in your general daily walking around time who you’ll never see again for as long as you live. Even if you did, you wouldn’t know you were. So, when I see a particularly appealing female, I check her out. I’m never going to see her again, so I take advantage of one of the small pleasures afforded by living in such a stew of humanity and one of the large blessings bestowed upon me at birth: lots of attractive people close by, daily, and the ability to see.
Girls in My Scenery
February 9, 2010
For those of you who have read along with this story since its first post, last July, you know, from the fifteen or twenty posts which follow it, that I am not like you. Well, that’s not necessarily true. I’m a lot like some of you. Some of you are even worse than me.
But, from The Bad Flasher, you know one thing, among others, about me: I like girls. What you haven’t learned about me yet, though, among other things, is what types specifically, and why? And, if you’ve read this, or this, you might ask yourself, “Well, yeah…but do you “like” them as a raging psychopath or as a seemingly sensitive guy who didn’t, as far as I can tell, have a too terribly traumatic upbringing, contrary to what you seem to be suggesting? Like, dude, where’s all this flashing I came here to see?”
Well, the flashing is coming. After all, one should never – in my opinion – flash a female just because she’s a female. That’s a waste of time and energy, and an unnecessary risk. So, in the spirit of getting to know me better, I present you with one – of the many – types of females I like. What I ‘like’ them for is determined upon my closer, in-person, examination. But generally, and as an example, see what interests me about these women, pictured above…
Build Me A Woman Pt. 3: This Time It’s [The] Personal(s).
February 6, 2010
“…No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to…”
- George Carlin, from the preface to his book, Brain Droppings
I rarely date. It’s not that I couldn’t date if I wanted to. I don’t try to. Why? Well, for one, I’m a loner. I’m happy in the company of Me. One of the reasons I’m content being an isolationist is because I enjoy thinking.
“I got this real moron thing I do? It’s called THINKING!?”
- George Carlin
I’m capable of critical and analytical thought. Therefore, I’m able to understand the difference between the things I need, like toilet paper, or water or shelter, and the things I merely want, like, say, a new sweater, or a lobster dinner, or a blow job. I’ve never been a follower. A submissive, yes. But that’s a sexual thing I’ll come to in time, later in this story. I’ve always disliked what I term America’s Lemming Mentality. You know it. You may be part of it. It’s the endless marching of the consumerist naked, following the regally clothed corporate masters to points known only to them, only because, “Well, the person next to me is doing it, going there, wearing it, eating it, buying it, watching it, renting it, reading it, flying to it, listening to it, subscribing to it, believing it…so it must be okay! I’ll do it too!”
None for me, thanks. I had a big breakfast.
I prefer to go in the other direction. Invariably there will be more interesting things to explore over there, and more of them for me to enjoy because there will be less of you there fucking them up. Like, for instance, the last row of seats at the movies.
Build Me A Woman Pt. 2
February 5, 2010
Although you can’t see her feet, we know from the photo above this woman is wearing a skirt. From her sleeveless top, we know the temperature is warm, so can safely assume her legs are bare. And while she could be wearing, say, black Chuck Taylor Converse high-tops – which she’d no doubt wear with high style – to provide a visual and stylistic contradiction, sympathetic to her age, city and overall style, we can also safely assume she’s wearing a more tailored shoe: a sandal, flat or platform wedge slide or sandal. Her feet are, no doubt, pedicured, and her nails, polished.
No necklace. No earrings we can see. Perhaps she’s wearing a small stud. A watch. Clean. Light. Pure. Natural. Naked. Look at her bag in her left hand. It appears to be white, like her top. If her skirt is black, it’s safe to assume then, her shoes are too. Or, they could be white also. These would be the obvious choices of shoe color, with bag, skirt and top as we see them here, to make a resoundingly strong, but simple visual statement: I am attractive. I feel pretty. I’d ask myself out on a date if I met me.
Build Me A Woman Pt. 1
February 5, 2010
When I was little, my father would point into his closet and say, with an arm over my shoulder like a pal, “Maxy, a gentleman always lets his shoes sleep in the trees.” He’d be pointing to his shell cordovan Aldens, and his Florsheim Crown Imperials, which would be resting in their cloth shoe bags on the floor of his closet, each stuffed with a cedar shoetree. “And,” he’d say, smiling, “when you wear shoes like these one day, you’ll keep trees in them too.” Then he’d tousle my hair, and, with a “Let’s go see if we can help your mother in the kitchen,” off we’d go, Daddy the Dandy and his apprentice.
My mother didn’t use shoetrees in her shoes. Instead, she kept hers in their original boxes from the store. She was more worried about dust and spiders than creases in the leather. My mom had more pairs than my dad, because, like most women of her age and social class, she only wore certain shoes with certain outfits. Most of my mother’s shoes, I remember, were flats, or low heeled pumps. I think she had one or two pair which were high-heeled, but these only came out rarely, for weddings or funerals or some equally formal social affair. I recall how physically different she’d look when she’d wear the higher heeled shoes with a dress. She elongated, and became younger in appearance, somehow. Since I’d only see her wear these shoes once or twice a year, when I’d first see her in them, I remember my first thought was always something like, Who’s this? Oh! It’s…MOM?
Culture: Pervert in a Petri Dish
February 3, 2010
I did most of my masturbating in the first two years of high school at night, in my bedroom, with occasional sessions in the bathroom. In the last two years, I’d begin using the bathroom more, and the cellar, and my bedroom less. And, when the weather permitted, I’d use the backyard, parking lots, deserted fields and wooded groves, the beach…I’d even end up, one night during my senior year in high school, on the roof of a shopping center in Acton, Massachusetts, pants down, gyrating like a shaman in the moonlight. A shaman with his cock in his left hand and a Kleenex in his right.
But, in the daytime, during my freshman and sophomore years in high school, and in junior high, too, I was exposed to culture on a large, and far-ranging scale by my parents. No time to jerk off when you’re sitting in Boston Symphony Hall with your mother and father, watching Arthur Fiedler conduct the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Bedroom Brothel, Paper Pimp. Pt. 4
February 1, 2010
The first women I allowed in my bedroom, other than my mother and sister, were the women in the two porn magazines Brian allowed me to take from his car trunk in the Sparrow Lake High School’s student parking lot. But, within a month, I had added thirteen or fourteen more magazines to my growing bedroom brothel. Now, my bedroom hid over one hundred women, all of whom were either nude, or dressed in lingerie, stockings and shiny high-heeled shoes. I decided that hiding several dozen naked women under my mattress wasn’t a good idea anymore; their bodies, pressing into my mattress, were changing the shape of my twin bed. My mother might find them. And even though none of them spoke a word, or made a sound, all of them spent every day and night constantly exposing their genitalia. It was hard enough for me to get them into my bedroom in the first place. Now their friends were coming over.
Bedroom Brothel, Paper Pimp. Pt. 3
January 30, 2010
“Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.”
- Donald Rumsfeld
The Dawn of Man
It happened in the shower, during the year I was in Miss Davidson’s sixth grade class in Sparrow Lake. I was shampooing my hair with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, and then, I was doing something else the scientists at Johnson & Johnson probably didn’t intend, or expect, from their shampoo research and testing and focus groups. Babies don’t masturbate.
I didn’t know what, precisely, I was doing to myself, or what was going to happen, but then it did. The steam, the warm water, the assurance of privacy from the closed bathroom door and that thick, sweet smell from the shampoo all set upon me as I reached orgasm. My head felt as though it was filled with a gallon of molten lead. My legs felt like rubber stalks. My vision blurred. I saw floating, fuzzy splotches of red and green and blue against the tiles of the tub. I was aflame. I couldn’t catch my breath. My heart raced. I was covered in shampoo lather, so never saw my ejaculate. It’s probably a good thing too, or, maybe it was a bad thing. I’m not sure. Had I seen it, I’d probably have gone straight to my parents – wet, worried and wrapped in a towel – to tell them I had to go to the emergency room, because, “…all this white stuff just came out of my penis and I can’t breathe!”
But I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell anyone. Instead, I kept this strange occurrence to myself. The the next day, I repeated the circumstances surrounding the shampoo incident, and this time, held onto the towel rack with my free hand so I wouldn’t fall and hit my head if the sledgehammer sensation attacked me again. It did. And this time, because I was expecting it, I was able to usher it to completion with a more attentive strength.
I remember how, when my vision cleared, I held my hand under the shower’s stream to rinse off the shampoo lather, but how some of the lather didn’t rinse off immediately, and how it looked different from the lather swirling down the drain. It looked like soap scum mixed with glue. But I hadn’t touched the soap, and my mother didn’t keep glue in the bathroom. No worries. I wiped my hand on the soap, and it came off.
And so it began. The thing is, I didn’t know what “it” was. I didn’t know what I was doing. I only knew that if I got a boner in the shower, and rubbed it with shampoo, something happened, and it was good. The only thing missing from the bathroom was the singing monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey .
Bedroom Brothel, Paper Pimp. Pt. 2
January 28, 2010
Growing.
When I got my first car a week after getting my driver’s license, I was forever cut from the umbilical cord attaching me to my parents, and their oversight. I found that, when in the car, driving the long desolate stretches of rural two lane black top from Sparrow Lake to Kelton and back, that my thoughts were agitated. The movement of the car – its forward force – loosened my mind’s collective hold on the millions of images, questions, fears, fantasies, aspirations, regrets and enthusiasms which my ears and eyes had harvested over the years of puberty and which had lodged, and calcified, in my mind.
Driving allowed me to think freely, wildly, as the car sped along, and allowed me to speak – out loud, and to myself – on whatever topic or subject I chose. It was in this car, during my first two years of high school, that I began to grow apart from the Max I had been, and knew myself to be, and to meet a new Max – a Max who introduced me to thoughts not, perhaps, entirely healthy, but endlessly stimulating and enticing.
Bedroom Brothel, Paper Pimp. Pt. 1
January 26, 2010
Thy Neighbor’s Wife
When my mother suggested I read Gay Talese’s Thy Neighbor’s Wife, I didn’t ask why, or ask her what the book was about. She was ironing and I was watching television in our family room, and she just said it.
“I think you’d like the book just to your left there, on the second shelf. See it?” The basement smelled of hot, damp cotton fibers from the steam iron gliding across my father’s shirts and white handkerchiefs.
“Maxy…look…,” iron down, finger raised in a general direction, “…it’s the dark maroon paperback, about six books in from the right. See it? It’s called Thy Neighbor’s Wife. I think you’d like it.”
I had seen the book on its shelf many times. All four walls of the finished basement room were lined with custom-made pine bookshelves which stood to the ceiling, and all their shelves were filled. To sit in that room meant to be surrounded by hundreds of books. Maybe over one thousand books. Their bindings were cloth, glossy or matte paper, vinyl, and some were even leather. Their titles spanned from The Little Prince and The Thin Red Line to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to Papillon. Sometimes, at night, I’d sit amongst the books in dim light and stare at the fonts that dressed and spelled their titles, and I’d wonder what each book I pondered held within.
Burr, The Jungle, The Naked and the Dead, Ladies and Gentlemen, LENNY BRUCE!, Helter Skelter, In the Shadow of Man, Passion Play, The Painted Bird…the titles were a never-ending fascination. What did they mean? Up until that point in high school, I wasn’t an avid, or even a regular reader of books. I had read S.E. Hinton’s books in junior high, and Elie Wiesel’s Night and The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird in high school English classes, but I was still more of an observer of books than a reader.
About a week or two after my mother suggested I read Thy Neighbor’s Wife, I took it off its shelf, and opened it. It was night. I was alone in the basement. I just opened the little maroon paperback, flipped past its title pages and forward, to its Page 1, and began reading the first sentence…
Something In The Night
January 24, 2010
I’m riding down Kingsley,
figuring I’ll get a drink
Turn the radio up loud,
so I don’t have to think,
I take her to the floor,
looking for a moment when the world
seems right,
And I tear into the guts,
of something in the night.
You’re born with nothing,
and better off that way,
Soon as you’ve got something they send
someone to try and take it away,
You can ride this road ’till dawn,
without another human being in sight,
Just kids wasted on
something in the night.
Nothing is forgotten or forgiven,
when it’s your last time around,
I got stuff running ’round my head
That I just can’t live down
When we found the things we loved,
They were crushed and dying in the dirt.
We tried to pick up the pieces,
And get away without getting hurt,
But they caught us at the state line,
And burned our cars in one last fight,
And left us running burned and blind,
Chasing something in the night.
Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)
Being introduced to Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics and music in the last fourteen months of the 1970′s was the first of three formative events as I began High School in Sparrow Lake. The second was meeting Ray Bryson in sophomore biology. Ray was my lab partner. He turned me on to marijuana. Immediately after biology was over, at 9:30am. The third event was earning my driver’s license, and a week later, getting my first car.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
The Music of Sound Pt. 2
January 21, 2010
By 1978, the lawsuit between Springsteen and his manager, Mike Appel was over. Springsteen had won a hard-fought victory for the rights to his music, and had finally been allowed by the courts to record and release the follow-up album to 1975′s Born To Run. Springsteen had come through a personal and professional fire the likes of which he never could have imagined, and, bloodied badly by a bite from big music industry business and by lessons learned about loyalty and trust, he had fought off his assailants, dressed his wounds, and had begun to heal. And he had begun to grow up and wise up. The lyrics on his new album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, told his story metaphorically. In a word, the story was Brutal.
Up until Born To Run’s release, and shortly thereafter, Springsteen’s musical persona – his only persona – was of an Asbury Park boardwalk urchin in leather jacket, wife beater, newsboy cap and scruffy beard. But the cold, hard reality of the lawsuit, and the difficult shoe string years on the road touring while the lawsuit ran its course stripped away much of Springsteen’s child-like wonder and carefree spirit. Away went the scruffy beard, and in its place blossomed a chiseled, handsome face of a young man now flavored with some of life’s bitters. Away went the motorcycle meets Romeo romanticism of his lyrics, and in their place came questioning, angry, searching characters, dressed in dust-caked Frye boots and work shirts, driving big box muscle cars with Hearst shifters on lonely western highways in the night, towards fates unknown. The ragamuffin with the gap-toothed smile on Born To Run, the boy who performed rollicking stage shows spinning tales of midway barkers, bikers, runaways and junkies was replaced by a lean, cleaned up toughie in trim Levi’s, collared shirts and Beatle boots.
After almost three years of constant live performance on the road, Springsteen and his E Street Band finally made it back to their home state of New Jersey for their three night stand at the Capitol Theatre in September, 1978. Springsteen was free of his legal shackling, and for the first time in his professional career, totally in control of his music, and destiny. With his new manager, the ex-rock critic, Jon Landau at his side, and with a genius live sound designer in Bruce Jackson and the savant lighting designer, Marc Brickman, Springsteen’s live shows were now supernova marathons of sonic and visual Rock & Roll splendor.
Take a look, and a listen. This is what I heard in Miami. This is Springsteen at The Capitol Theatre, Passaic, New Jersey, September 1978, filmed by the in-house camera crew of The Capitol Theatre.
The Music of Sound Pt. 1
January 20, 2010
The Capitol Theatre, Passaic, New Jersey; September 19, 1978
In the waning hours of summer, 1978, in an old northern New Jersey porn theater with perfect acoustics, a professionally crippled Bruce Springsteen, supported by his loyal E Street Band, touched his artistic zenith and forged an aural masterpiece perhaps unmatched in live rock performance.
The concert Springsteen performed that night with his E Street Band at The Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey was simulcast on FM radio from Maine to Virginia off of a feed provided by the WNEW-FM remote van parked outside. From the tip of New England to the middle-Atlantic coast, thousands of listeners cued cassette recorders to capture the show’s broadcast. One of them would become my best friend during my first two years of high school. He lived in my town, Sparrow Lake. His name was John Ferencz.
Five months later, he and I would spend a school vacation week together at my grandparent’s condominium in Miami Beach. One night, as we sat on my mother’s parent’s balcony above Miami Beach, in the sweet, humid caress of early evening’s breeze, watching a lavender pink sky turn to purple and then to black, John played his tape of the concert for me for the first time. The music from the sounds made in Passaic that my friend played for me in Miami, coupled with Springsteen’s lyrics, left me awed, mystified and exhilarated, and caused great tectonic plates of emotion to rumble and shift within me. Springsteen’s Passaic show on September 19th was, for me, nothing short of a full-blown, teenage emotional earthquake, the aftershocks of which I’d feel, and ruminate on, for years to come. Read the rest of this entry »
